NWTA’s trail building equipment
recovered near Forest Grove
recovered near Forest Grove
A trailer full of equipment, including an $80,000 trail building machine, that was stolen from Stub Stewart State Park in November has been recovered by the Oregon State Police (OSP).
The trailer and its contents are owned by local non-profit the Northwest Trail Alliance (NWTA).
According to a statement released this morning by the OSP, the trailer was found yesterday in a heavily forested area of private property in Forest Grove. They searched the property after receiving an anonymous tip (a reward was being offered).
OSP says no arrests have been made in the case, but the investigation is ongoing and a suspect has been identified but not charged.
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Sweeeeeeet.
Awesome! Best news I’ve heard! Hope everything is in order!
That is fantastic news. The idea of it being cut up for scrap was just too terrible to think about.
Just to be clear; the trailer AND its contents were recovered? Trailer found- good news. Tractor also found- GREAT news. Both found (and undamaged)- the BEST news.
I’ll be it’s hard to move a huge tractor on the black market. Maybe they just used it and abandoned it(?).
Best news possible! Now I can truly have a Happy New Year! Cheers all.
WOOOOT!
Alright!
Anyone know the back story on who the suspect is?
Happy New Year!
Any damage? I haven’t seen any mention of condition in any published reports.
awesome news….more good trails to come and quick done by machine…..great news!!
A lucky break for the NWTA! Won’t be long and it’ll have its machine back punching out miles of trail through forest lands in Oregon.
This is fantastic news!
Yay!
Lets hope this incident will help the NWTA to clarify if there is a need for insuring such equiptment, if it was not already covered.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst!
Excellent news.
That is wonderful news!
Really fantastic to hear.
Thanks Officer Henry Gripper!
HA!
Took the thieves THIS LONG to figure out the goods were too hot to fence.
/schadenfreude
Also, please confirm recovery of all contents of the trailer as undamaged.
I would have expected some tentative cutting marks on the tractor.
Must be some secret trails out there somewhere!
This one dosen’t seem to be a simple theft for the sake of trying to obtain material goods for financial gain. I think the motive here was spite, manevolence, and an attempt at “revenge” by a pissed off neighbor. Well, that’s how I read it anyhow.
That is a reasonable assumption.
From the standpoint of some who would love to have wreaked revenge on people’s property in my misspent youth there were some factors that make getting away with it problematic:
The vehicle was marked
The cargo unique
The cargo was expensive
The owner is a volunteer non-profit organization
Each of these draws police and public attention quite well and biases public opinion towards the victim more so than average thefts.
From the stand point of simple revenge:
Why was it recovered intact?
Why not damaged, disassembled, battered or burned?
Why bother to steal it to begin with: with a pair of bolt cutters, a few gallons of diesel and a case of road flares the truly vindictive could have reduced the tractor and its container to a melted pile of slag.
You only steal something intact if you hope to get some sort of GAIN out of it.
I think gain…money…was absolutely the reason the trailer was stolen. Maybe the trail building machine really wasn’t the primary object of the theft. Those type of trailers have a wide range of uses…construction, landscaping, moving…you name it. I would think, on it’s own, a trailer like that would have been easy to re-sell. Fill it up with junk for a flea market sale. ‘Oh..by the way…the trailer is for sale too!’.
A little rattle can job quickly gets rid of the logos. Chop shops with a big torch could have cut the machine up and parted it out. Maybe the thief didn’t have the right connections to dispose of the machine. Hoping there would have been more details reported about who stole this machine. NWTA better strengthen their security on this machine so another wise guy doesn’t steal it.
This is great news. Now NWTA can finally use the rest of those RTP funds to put all those people to work building trails. Right? 😉
This is great news for the new year.
I spoke with Tom Archer from the NWTA yesterday and there are a lot of details to this story not mentioned in this press release. I’m sure Jonathan will do a follow up.
I’d rather not put incomplete info out there, so I’ll leave it at that.
Please stop jumping to conclusions based on this press release and your own personal “feelings.” Most of the “guesses” about what happened, who had insurance and who is to blame are way off the mark.
Tony, You can’t do that man. Now we’re totally on pins and needles. I think the disc golfers are behind it.